The Legend of Johnny Cash is billed as the "first ever complete career spanning collection," which is true to a certain extent -- other collections cover territory from 1955 to 2003, but this is the first to contain everything from Sun to Cash's Rick Rubin-produced comeback recordings for American in the '90s and 2000s. Since the biggest complaint that could be lodged against the otherwise excellent 2005 box The Legend -- which, despite appearances to the contrary, is an entirely different compilation -- was that it contained none of these Rubin-produced records, it would seem like The Legend Of would be a bit of a godsend, but that's not necessarily true. If The Legend contained too little of Cash's American recordings, The Legend Of contains too many.

At 21 tracks it would seem like this would contain most of Cash's signature songs, and while it does contain a great many of them, it's hampered by the whopping six songs devoted to his American recordings -- add to the mix the 1993 Cash-sung U2 cut "The Wanderer" and "Highwayman" by Cash's outlaw supergroup with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson, and that's just a little under half of the disc devoted to music made after his prime. Not just that, but the music he made after he left Columbia partway through the '80s often does not sit well with his classic Sun and Columbia records -- as soon as the synths and big drums of "Highwayman" kick in, the feel of the music changes. While Rubin's work doesn't sound as completely foreign as the icy Euro-rock textures of "The Wanderer" -- as "Rusty Cage" and "I've Been Everywhere," the two selections from 1996's excellent Unchained prove, Rubin knew how to revitalize Cash's signature sound (tellingly, those are the only Rubin-helmed sessions where Cash was supported by a full band) -- there is simply too much of it here, particularly because the stark, monochromatic acoustic readings of "Delia's Gone" and "Give My Love to Rose" sound neutered compared to the versions Cash cut with the Tennessee Two.

While just over half of this compilation is devoted to that music -- all the big hits are hauled out once again -- there still is too much latter-day material for this to be an entirely accurate, satisfying collection (particularly with such big hits as "Don't Take Your Guns to Town," "Five Feet High and Rising," "Daddy Sang Bass," and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," among other signature tunes, missing). That said, for a brief one-stop overview of Cash's career, this is pretty good -- comps that concentrate solely on the Sun and Columbia eras are more consistent, but this has most of the big singles, which will certainly fill the needs of those who want a compilation that covers a lot of ground. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Not to be confused with the LEGEND box set released around the same time in 2005, THE LEGEND OF JOHNNY CASH is the first single-disc compilation to span the country icon's entire recorded career. Although whittling Cash's massive catalogue down to a single disc is virtually futile, the Hip-O label has done an admirable job, resulting in a well -chosen 21-track history of the late Man in Black.


  At Folsom Prison CD
  by Johnny Cash
Our Price: $6.19 CD / $9.99 MP3
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Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash's legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail. Surely, this dark outlaw stance wasn't a contrivance but it was an exaggeration, with Cash creating this image by tailoring his set list to his audience of prisoners, filling up the set with tales of murder and imprisonment -- a bid for common ground with the convicts, but also a sly way to suggest that maybe Cash really did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Given the cloud of death that hangs over the songs on At Folsom Prison, there's a temptation to think of it as a gothic, gloomy affair or perhaps a repository of rage, but what's striking about Cash's performance is that he never romanticizes either the crime or the criminals: if anything, he underplays the seriousness with his matter-of-fact ballad delivery or how he throws out wry jokes.

Cash is relating to the prisoners and he's entertaining them too, singing "Cocaine Blues" like a bastard on the run, turning a death sentence into literal gallows humor on "25 Minutes to Go," playing "I Got Stripes" as if it were a badge of pride. Never before had his music seemed so vigorous as it does here, nor had he tied together his humor, gravity, and spirituality in one record. In every sense, it was a breakthrough, but more than that, At Folsom Prison is the quintessential Johnny Cash album, the place where his legend burns bright and eternal. [This Expanded Edition of At Folsom Prison added three bonus tracks to the songs included in the original 16-track LP.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Want to hear part of the reason why Johnny Cash is an icon, a singer respected and influential in country, folk, and rock & roll? THIS is it! In 1968--one of the most tumultuous years in American history since the Depression years--Cash recorded an album live in front of a (literally) captive (but wildly appreciative) audience, in Folsom Prison.


  Hank Williams, Jr. & Friends CD
  by Hank Williams, Jr.
Our Price: $5.29 CD / $8.24 MP3
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This is where Hank Williams Jr. solidified the hard-hitting style he would become known for, perhaps inspired by the pioneering outlaw country records Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings had begun making a couple of years earlier. Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band's Toy Caldwell help out here, and you can hear Williams's trademark mix of country and Southern rock taking shape on his cover of the Tucker Band's classic "Can't You See." "And Friends" is right. Hank Williams, Jr.'s first step off the Hank Sr. bandwagon -- against all counsel from his mother and managers -- is a doozy of a record.

Teaming with Toy Caldwell, Charlie Daniels, Pete Carr, and producer Dick Glasser, among others, Bocephus turned in one of the most inspiring performances of his career. First there is his read of Marshall Tucker's classic "Can't You See" that is wrought with so much emotion it literally spills from the band toward his tortured vocal. Next there are two of Hank Jr.'s own classics, "Stoned at the Jukebox," which has been covered by any country star worth his or her salt, and his personal anthem, "Living Proof." He dared fate on this one, coming off an attempted suicide and preceding a fall 600 feet down a mountain. But he was indeed "Living Proof" that he could survive his father's legend and do something noteworthy of his own. On top of all this are amazing renditions of "Brothers of the Road" and his own "Montana Song." Though it's brief, it smokes; Hank Williams, Jr. & Friends stands as a personal watermark for Bocephus; it is one of the best country- rock albums ever made and stands with the best of the outlaw recordings of the era. ~ Thom Jurek

No Depression (11-12/00, pp.104-5) - "...A country music milestone....peppered with passion, insight, wonder and humor in all the right places..."


  Delerium Tremolos CD
  by Ray Wylie Hubbard
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It seems strange that folks like Ray Wylie Hubbard once lived such wild lives but have been able to make solid comebacks later in life. Strange, because Hubbard, on Delirium Tremolos, sounds as good as he ever has. Better yet, the album has a nice, mellow country sound, and Hubbard has discarded, for the time being, his penchant for preachy, comic songs. It doesn't hurt that the album's been produced by Gurf Morlix, nor that he's joined by great harmony singers like Patty Griffin and Eliza Gilkyson. Hubbard's choice of songs are solid too, combining deep but real lyrics ("And the rock and roll gypsies are ridin' tonight/ On the carnival strips they'll stay") with good melodies and hooks. The first three songs, "The Beauty Way," "Rock and Roll Gypsies," and "Dallas After Midnight," are all keepers, and a beautiful start to a solid album.

Other good songs include "This Mornin' I Am Born Again," a gospel-flavored hymn that even pagans should dig. Delirium Tremolos only runs 45 minutes, which means that Hubbard and Morlix resisted the temptation to fill the disc with less than satisfactory material. Roots fans and anyone who enjoys good songwriting will want to pick up a copy. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

  Longhaired Rednecks/David Allan Coe Rides Again CD - Import
  by David Allan Coe
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Long Haired Redneck/Rides Again is the second volume in Bear Family's David Allan Coe two-fer series of his work at Columbia Records from 1974-1981. This pair of albums, released in 1976 and 1977, respectively -- his third and fourth albums for the label -- find Coe aligning himself completely with the Willie, Waylon, and Billy Joe Shaver "outlaw" movement -- as if he ever had to try. Coming on the heels of his first Top Ten hit, a cover of Steve Goodman's "You Never Even Called Me by My Name" from Once Upon a Rhyme, Longhaired Redneck is one of Coe's finest records.

He either wrote or co-wrote every song on the album, and the title track became his anthem. In addition, the haunting ballad "Revenge," "Free Born Rambling Man," and "Living on the Run" are hallmarks of his best work as a songwriter and as a performer. Rides Again is an altogether different affair. While Coe once again wrote or co-wrote all but one of the album's ten tracks, it is also the beginning of a darkly cynical period in his work, featuring such tracks as the conceited "Willie, Waylon, and Me" (complete with a reprise six tracks later); "If That Ain't Country (You Can Kiss My Ass)"; his paean to his polygamy, "The House We've Been Calling a Home"; and the bitter "Sense of Humor." There are also excellent songs here, such as "Under Rachel's Wings," "Greener Than the Grass We Laid On," and a cover of Dale Murphy's "Laid Back and Wasted." ~ Thom Jurek

2 LPs on 1 CD: LONGHAIRED REDNECKS (1976)/DAVID ALLEN COE RIDES AGAIN (1977).


  Red Headed Stranger CD
  by Willie Nelson
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Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It's defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration -- all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in Chet Flippo's liner notes to the 2000 reissue.

It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though, selling millions of copies, establishing Nelson as a superstar recording artist in its own right. For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of Phases and Stages sound shiny in comparison. It's difficult because it's old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there's much to admire in Nelson's intimate gamble, but it's really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It's undoubtedly distinctive -- and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year -- but it's strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it's a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Willie Nelson stopped shaving, grew his hair, ditched his suits and found acceptance with the hippies who bought the country rock of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Like TOMMY, RED HEADED STRANGER was a concept album, this time about a murderous preacher. His laid-back voice-and-guitar revival of "Blue Eyes Cryin' In The Rain" was a surprise US hit single, and Richard Thompson says, "I like the fact that he plays these terrible solos and leaves them alone, which takes a lot of guts these days."


  Ultimate Collection CD
  by Jerry Jeff Walker
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ULTIMATE COLLECTION includes hits from Jerry Jeff Walker's Atco, Decca, MCA and Elektra years.
Personnel includes: Jerry Jeff Walker (vocals, guitar); Reese Wynans (keyboards).
Producers include: Michael Browsky, Tom Dowd, Dan Elliot.
Compilation producer: Mike Ragogna.
Includes liner notes by Robyn Flanders.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
Liner Note Author: Robyn Flans.
Photographer: Charlyn Zlotnik.

Ultimate Collection is the most lengthy and comprehensive anthology yet assembled on Jerry Jeff Walker, with tracks licensed from three different labels spanning the late '60s through the late '70s. His classic "Mr. Bojangles" is here with other crowd pleasers such as "Hairy Ass Hillbillies," "Pissin' in the Wind," and "Up Against the Wall Redneck." Walker had a poetic side, too, but Ultimate Collection focuses mainly on his rambunctious singalongs, and entirely skips some of his early albums. All but one of his hits from the '70s is included, but none of his '80s hits made the cut.

In sum, Ultimate Collection is an imperfect survey of Walker's first decade or so, but has plenty of popular appeal. ~ Greg Adams


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